


you don't realize you're a flame

by tieria



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode 43, M/M, Speculation, Stardust Road, Three Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 10:43:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13996566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieria/pseuds/tieria
Summary: No matter how many people he shelters, supports,saves,it's never the right answer. He can't let this turn into another regret in a lifetime full of them. He can't let this story end in failure.(Or: Kogami Ryoken has always tried to do the right thing. It's just that every time it's mattered, the lines between 'right' and 'wrong' have been impossibly blurry.)





	you don't realize you're a flame

**Author's Note:**

> you don't realize you're a flame (until the candle's already burned itself out)
> 
> I wasn't going to write this but started crying at 1 am over Ryoken again and then suddenly had a third of this written out on my phone so um. Here it is?

It needed to be him.

The one child his voice had been able to reach, who’d clung to his words desperate as a reason to live in and of themselves. It couldn’t be anyone else, and so Ryoken called it destiny- a ten year bond neither of them could help but chase. Seeker and sought, the boy and the voice giving him strength.

At the end of the line, Ryoken needed this proof. He needed to know that at least one of the children who suffered back then was saved. Kusanagi Jin certainly wasn’t. Spectre had never needed his intervention in the first place. He laid his father’s hand gently against the sheets and thought- _Show me, Fujiki Yusaku, that what I did was right._

As the sunset spilled over them, Yusaku tried to sway him towards a different future. His words were a promise of peace. Of acceptance. Of all the people he cared for most returned to vibrant life. (Except one- the man that mattered most. No foolish thoughts of miracles and crumbling towers would bring back his father.)

Any thought he had of taking Yusaku’s path shattered to make room for his resolve. This wasn’t about his redemption. The story didn’t end with Ryoken selfishly betraying his father’s memory, not after the sacrifice he’d made for him. He no longer had the right to his own wishes if he still wanted to carry the hopes his fallen friends had entrusted to him.

_Stop the Tower?_

Ryoken almost laughed.

There was never any choice but to fight.

 

It was almost an insult when Playmaker kept trying to appeal to him with kind words, with promises of a _future_ , as if this duel wasn’t the last act of their lives. His resolve built on ten years of regrets could never be so easily shattered. Revolver scoffed at him and pressed on. If Playmaker tried to gain momentum, then Revolver would seize it back- again, and again, and _again_. He couldn’t fail. Not this time.

There was no glory in the victory. The world had narrowed down to the two of them and a lying AI, standing on a platform atop the tower. The scenery had vanished, been stripped down to lingering bits of code falling neatly into place on the tower’s sixth ring. Even the reporters were gone. Perhaps they’d managed to log out, or perhaps they too had been consumed by the collapsing world- just another pair of sacrifices atop a mountain of them.

It meant there was no one to see the final turn. No witnesses to Revolver calmly declaring his final attack and having the audacity to smile when Playmaker had no more trump cards to play.

(Beneath his mask, Ryoken shook and damned yet another child he'd tried to save to death.)

The attack connected. The Ignis yelled in a panic as Playmaker cried out in pain from the bullet. For a moment, time seemed suspended- just the two of them and their moment of truth- then Playmaker dropped hard to the ground as his life dropped to zero.

Ryoken watched him fall and thought, distantly- _It’s over. You showed me nothing, Playmaker._

The red bite of the tower began to eat away at Playmaker’s prone avatar as the Ignis panicked, trying to escape its bonds to no avail. _A pathetic finale. But a successful one._

He intended to watch as they disappeared- they deserved that much respect as opponents, at least- but after a moment, Playmaker lifted his head to stare straight at him. And Ryoken wondered why. When Playmaker had failed and the burdens of the world on his shoulders had crushed him flat, why did his eyes still hold so much strength? Through the instinctive fear, why was there still _hope?_

“Revolver,” Playmaker said, picking himself up from the ground even as the Tower began pulling apart his consciousness, “Kogami. You don’t have to do this.”

“I do,” Revolver returned, grateful for his mask as their eyes met. He didn’t know what Playmaker would have been able to see in them otherwise.

“You don’t,” said Playmaker, green eyes dissolving into red-

And then he was gone.

It was the end.

Revolver stood alone in the empty world. A small panel appeared above his duel disk, pinging soft and pleasant with the completion of the sixth ring. Revolver took one last look down at the nothingness. He didn’t think himself sentimental, but he would be the last person alive to see it- there was something poetic, he supposed, about the destroyer of a world being its last witness. But an empty world was an empty world, and one he felt no affection for at that. Revolver turned his attention back towards the tower’s program, gaze slipping over the barren platform across the dueling field.

(In his mind, Yusaku extended his hand and asked him not to fight. Some tiny, trembling part of him that was still eight years old asked if this was really the right thing to do. He wasn’t a good person. Those were the words he'd told himself a thousand times over. And the bad guys- the ones who hurt others, the ones who caused suffering- weren’t supposed to win. That’s why, even though he loved his father more than anything, he had-)

Revolver shook away the meaningless thoughts. The Ignis was within the Tower now. All that remained was destroying the Cyberse hidden somewhere in the network, and he’d have done it. All he needed was to implement the activation protocol. All he needed was to hit the proper button. All he needed was…

( _Hey, you.)_

Ryoken tapped out a command on the panel, closed his eyes, and felt as the tower beneath his feet began to shake, the data it contained ready to burst outwards again- and let it all slip away.

 

The world returned to him in the soft rustling of fabric and a voice, soft in the emptiness. “You stopped it.”

Ryoken huffed out a bitter breath and shook his head. Failure. Cowardice. Another regret to add to his lifetime’s worth. Slowly he opened his eyes to the dark room- they’d dueled through the sunset, and Yusaku cut a dim figure in the dark. He still seemed as if he was catching his breath, as if something in him was strained and hurt- but none of it showed in his voice.

“You’ve done enough,” Yusaku told him steadily, as if it was the truth.

“My father is dead.” Because of him. Entrusted his final hopes to his failure of a son who turned his back again on loyalty. He didn’t see how he’d ever have _done_ _enough_ to make up for that.

“You saved your friends. You saved thousands of people around the world, just now.” A pause. “You saved me. Again.”

Ryoken didn’t reply. He no longer had any words to say, used them all up ten years ago in a gambit to do the right thing and only ended up here. No, words had never gotten him anything.

Yusaku sighed and glanced out the wall of windows. His eyes widened, and he walked to it slowly.

“Look,” Yusaku urged him, and finally, finally did Ryoken move to join him. None of his limbs felt like his own, moving stiff and one layer removed from his thoughts. It reminded him of the first time he’d tried out his LINK VRAINS avatar, how he’d had to adjust to standing taller, seeing higher, moving with limbs he hadn’t yet grown into in the real world.

Ryoken joined Yusaku at the windows, and, for the first time since he was eight years old, felt that he wouldn't be able to keep his tears from falling. Everything ached. Part of him wanted to close his eyes and never have them open again. His knees gave out, and he sank down before the glass, steadying himself with a palm pressed against the window.

He’d known what he’d see before he ever took the first step, and yet that did nothing for the pain that ripped through him then. The fates were playing another cruel joke, for down in the sea below was Stardust Road, glimmering beautiful as the day he’d first seen it, father’s hand on his shoulder and wide-eyed with wonder at their new home.

“This is pointless,” he said, and curled his hand against the window into a fist. “I was supposed to go down with the tower. We all were.”

Yusaku’s reply was blunt. He supposed he shouldn’t have expected sympathy- not that he would have wanted it in the first place. “You’re living now. Find your reasons to keep moving.”

“You may not understand,” Ryoken hissed, trying with everything he had to keep his voice from shaking, “but I can't do that. I just betrayed everything my father left me. You can’t possibly think I have reasons left.”

“You do. You still have an enemy to fight, don’t you?” _SOL_ , he thought- but Yusaku didn’t wait for his answer. “Then go fight them. Fight until you’re satisfied you have your revenge. That’s reason number one.”

Ryoken said nothing to that, but he nodded, sharp, and dropped his hand from the glass. First he’d have SOL answer for their sins. Then, he for his. But before any of that, he’d have to plan a funeral. The guest list would be short. Friends… Family only. _Reason number two_ , said a small voice like a memory in the back of his mind.

The silence stretched on for a very long time between them. Ryoken watched the glimmer of the sea down below, collecting himself for a tomorrow he’d stopped believing he would see. Yusaku watched with him, shifting every once and a while, but not impatiently- just shifting, a quiet reminder of his presence. The Ignis had the sense to stay blissfully mute. Just once was their peace broken by the door opening with a clatter and the cry of a name that wasn’t his. Wordlessly did Yusaku quiet Kusanagi, but the motion was enough to pull Ryoken’s attention away from the ocean as the door shut again.

He caught sight of his own reflection in the glass, eyes overlaid with Stardust Road like a pale imitation of the night sky. Everyone else was surely waking, by now. He owed it to them to check up on how they were doing. The moment he decided that, he no longer looked so lost. Yusaku must have sensed the change, because the mood between them shifted- still calm, but with an edge of expectation, now. For a little while longer Ryoken stayed quiet, then- “Why are you still here?”

“I told you. I’m going to save the person who saved me... Until the shadow of Hanoi is gone from them,” Yusaku added, cutting off Ryoken’s protest before it could even begin. He glanced up at Yusaku, expecting to see neutral deferment or a spark of passion leftover from his burning revenge, but found simple kindness in his eyes instead. A soft determination to see that promise through until the end.

Ryoken let out a long breath. When he spoke, it was with a half-smile in the turn of his question. “Does that mean I can count you as my reason number three?”

“If you want. You were always mine.” Yusaku extended a hand- literally, this time. Ostensibly it was to help him off his knees. But when he took it, drenched in the moonlight spilling through the window, it felt like so much more. Not quite salvation, but certainly more than he deserved.

Yusaku pulled him to his feet, and Ryoken squeezed his hand- a handshake, a promise, a _thank you_ he couldn’t yet put into words. It was the start of something new. He didn’t know if he was allowed to call it _destiny_ if he no longer knew who was playing what role, but he did know this:

His story did not end in failure, because his story was not yet done.


End file.
